Endangered sei whale found on North Carolina beach had plastic bag in throat, officials say

A plastic bag was reportedly discovered in the throat of a roughly 17-foot, endangered sei whale that recently washed up on a North Carolina beach.

The whale was found on Sunday on Masonboro Island, local news station WECT-6 reported. Officials with the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Marine Mammal Stranding Program were subsequently called to the scene.

Ann Pabst, a member of the Marine Mammal Stranding Program and professor of marine biology at the university, told WECT-6 finding a sei whale stranded in North Carolina is “rare.”

The sea creature appeared to be unhealthy and underweight. Its apparent condition led officials with UNCW and an official with the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association to decide it would be most humane to euthanize the whale.

“This animal was very, very thin. It wasn’t with its mom which it should have been. No food in the stomach, it was clear this animal hadn’t been eating for a while," Pabst told the news station.

A necropsy, an animal autopsy, performed on the whale would later reveal a plastic bag in its throat, WWAY News reported, citing William McLellan, the coordinator of the stranding program.

“It wasn’t able to get food into the mouth so, we are not quite sure when that happened,” McLellan said, noting the necropsy revealed the whale also had seagrass in its throat. It was either early on, McLellan said, which likely could have started the debilitating process or the animal itself could have been in a weakened state. McLellan added the researchers have "collected a bunch of samples for viral analysis and bacteriology."

While it’s not clear if the plastic was the cause of the sei whale’s death, “it certainly didn’t help the animal in its debilitated state,” Pabst told WECT-6.

Nature photographer Robbie Johnson took to Facebook with a video of the whale before it was euthanized.

“Urgent. Help needed,” he captioned the video, which had more than 37,000 views as of Thursday afternoon.

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“This is not a site I wanted to see on Masonboro,” Johnson says in the video.

Sei whales, which are listed as an endangered species, are known for their speed, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which noted they can travel up to 30 miles an hour. They weigh an average of 20 tons and can grow up to 66 feet in length.